Timbaland is back with a new look—but the same ol’ magic touch in the studio.

If What the Fuck? had a face, it’d be Jay-Z that night at New Hit Factory Studios, North Miami Beach. His disbelief is a pound on the back to Tim “Timbaland” Mosley, the producer sitting behind the Triton keyboard. Surprising Shawn Carter, who has eyes in the back of his rhymes, is a feat in itself. Next to Ghostface borrowing Slick Rick’s gold for a Beyoncé duet, this is one of the most goggled scenes in Jay-Z’s Fade to Black DVD—the birth of “Dirt Off Your Shoulders.” It allows a rare glimpse at Timbaland in action—rap and pop’s most sweated producer bouncing around the studio, animated and chubby, taking slugs from a plastic jug of pink Crystal Light.

If What the Fuck? had a face, it’d be anyone who sees Timbaland a year and some lifestyle change later, sitting in Hit Factory Studio C, 100+ pounds MIA, buff, and training for Mr. Miami, a bodybuilding contest in South Florida where he now lives.

A new Beat Club artist, rapper John Doe, slides through the room with a crack about Timbaland action figures. Across the couch, dupa fly Atlanta singer Ms. Keri whistles the bellydance jingle from “Big Pimpin’.”

The lounge-area TV shows “The Potion” video with Ludacris yawping all over Tim’s drunken-owl beat, one that a confused Jigga had passed on that night in Miami. “The Potion” is followed by a Caress soap ad featuring LL and the ladies who love him. They’re giggling to “Headsprung,” a Timbaland track with enough bass to vibrate the entire building down to the Florida Keys.

LL, who once put a muscle-bound man’s face in the sand, was the main inspiration for Mosley’s new gym habit. That and Mosley seeing his former 332-pound self in Jigga’s retirement DVD. Is it more of a marvel that 2004’s dopest beat is on a soap commercial, or that Tim looks like he could benchpress the Beat Club studio bus sitting out in the parking lot?

“I did ‘Headsprung’ on the bus,” says the 33-year-old from Virginia Beach. “I did it in the headphones and zoned out that way. LL was happy with it.” Timbaland’s beat protégé, Nate “Danja” Hills, was on the bus when “Headsprung” was first hatched. “It was hurting my chest. You thought your head was gonna pop off! That bass was crushing you, but you could hear all the other sounds too.”

Costing 1.1 million dollars, the 45-foot Beat Club bus is tricked out with a fully operational studio, vocal booth, cheetah-print pillows, customized Beat Club rug, mirrors on the ceiling, and a marbleized kitchen built to specifications of Tim’s personal protein chef. Catering to work and workout regime, the bus kitchen fights the late-night Denny’s fat farm.

“The kitchen is as important as the studio,” says Rick Frazier, Tim’s manager, bus designer, and occasional bus driver. “He’s on a strict diet. Before we really got stationed down here in Miami, we traveled between New York, L.A., and Virginia. We’d spend, like, four months in each city and keep moving. Tim would go back there, sleep, do a new track, and before you know it, it’s on somebody’s album. Tim would get a room at the Trump Hotel but stay on the bus. Only go into the hotel to shower. That’s how much he was working at one time.”

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